Clean out your fridge and make a calzone!

Some days I open the fridge and honestly, there’s nothing in there. Not a potato. No leftovers. One egg. Sad. Other days there are odds and ends. Last week I took some of those odds and ends and made calzones. I’m not the greatest calzone maker–I tend to make them with massive quantities of dough and not enough filling–but I try, and I think I can do better. What you see here would have been best in one calzone, but I made two. Knowing that, though, means I’ll make fuller calzones in the future.

Calzones are essentially folded pizzas. I start with a dough recipe–I have a few a swap between–which makes 2 pies. This will make two enormous calzones, which will feed 4-6 people. We usually get two servings each, but I think with more guts, we’d get more servings. When your dough has risen and is ready to go, you spread it out, put toppings on half, and fold closed, pinching the edges up to close. You want to do this on an oiled cookie sheet so it won’t stick. For these calzones I had some frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed dry; a few sliced artichokes which I froze this summer; mozzarella, cheddar and parmesan cheese; some chopped pepperoni. Anything will do. I bake the calzones usually in a 375* oven for about half an hour, keeping my eye on it regularly to make sure it cooks through without burning.

Calzones are great with ricotta cheese, garlic, ground meat, broccoli, you name it. What you have here is a template, which you can adjust any which way you’d like. I’d say for enormous calzones you want at least a couple cups of filling–we had maybe 1c/each, and hence our dough to filling ratio problem. They’re a nice way to clean out the veggie drawer and the meat/cheese drawer. I hate throwing food out, myself, and calzones help use up all that stuff on the verge of tossing. We eat these with a simple tomato sauce–maybe some leftover marinara, or a can of tomato sauce simmered with a little oregano and red pepper flakes. Tasty.